Which, fiend-like, flies the magic ring
You form with sound, when pleas'd to sing;
Whate'er you say, howe'er you move,
We look, we listen, and approve.
Your touch, which gives to feeling bliss,
Our nerves officious throng to kiss;
By Celia's pat, on their report,
The grave-air'd soul, inclin'd to sport,
Renounces wisdom's sullen pomp,
And loves the floral game, to romp.
But who can view the pointed rays,
That from black eyes scintillant blaze?
Love on his throne of glory seems
Encompass'd with satellite beams.
But when blue eyes, more softly bright,
Diffuse benignly humid light,
We gaze, and see the smiling loves,
And Cytherea's gentle doves,
And raptur'd fix in such a face,

Love's mercy-seat, and throne of grace.
Shine but on age, you melt its snow;
Again fires long-extinguish'd glow,
And, charm'd by witchery of eyes,
Blood long congealed liquefies!
True miracle, and fairly done
By heads which are ador'd while on.
But ob, what pity 't is to find
Such beauties both of form and mind,
By modern breeding much debas'd,
In half the female world at least!
Hence I with care such lott'ries shun,
Where, a prize miss'd, I'm quite undone;
And han't, by vent'ring on a wife,
Yet run the greatest risk in life.

Mothers, and guardian aunts, forbear
Your impious pains to form the fair,
Nor lay out so much cost and art,
But to deflow'r the virgin heart;
Of every folly-fost'ring bed

By quick'ning heat of custom bred.
Rather than by your culture spoil'd,
Desist, and give us nature wild,
Delighted with a hoyden soul,
Which truth and innocence control.
Coquets, leave off affected arts,
Gay fowlers at a flock of hearts;
Woodcocks to shun your snares have skill,
You show so plain, you strive to kill.
In love the artless catch the game,
And they scarce miss who never aim.

The world's great author did create
The sex to fit the nuptial state,
And meant a blessing in a wife
To solace the fatigues of life;
And old inspired times display,
How wives could love, and yet obey.
Then truth, and patience of control,
And house-wife arts adorn'd the soul;
And charms, the gift of Nature, shone;
And jealousy, a thing unknown:
Veils were the only masks they wore;
Novels (receipts to make a whore)
Nor ombre, nor quadrille they knew,
Nor Pam's puissance felt at loo.

Wise men did not to be thought gay,
Then compliment their pow'r away:
But lest, by frail desires misled,
The girls forbidden paths should tread,
Of ign'rance rais'd the safe high wall;
We sink haw-haws, that show them all.

Thus we at once solicit sense,
And charge then not to break the fence.
Now, if untir'd, consider friend,
What I avoid to gain my end.

I never am at meeting seen,
Meeting, that region of the Spleen;
The broken heart, the busy fiend,
The inward call, on Spleen depend.

Law, licens'd breaking of the peace,
To which vacation is disease:
A gypsy diction scarce known well
By th' magi, who law-fortunes tell,
I shun; nor let it breed within
Anxiety, and that the Spleen;
Law, grown a forest, where perplex
The mazes, and the brambles vex;
Where its twelve verd'rers every day
Are changing still the public way:
Yet if we miss our path and err,
We grievous penalties incur;
And wand'rers tire, and tear their skin,
And then get out where they went in.
I never game, and rarely bet, ---
Am loth to lend, or run in debt.
No compter-writs me agitate;
Who moralizing pass the gate,
And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn,
Who vainly o'er their bondage mourn.
Wisdom, before beneath their care,
Pays her upbraiding visits there,
And forces folly through the grate,
Her panegyric to repeat.

This view, profusely when inclin'd,
Enters a caveat in the mind:
Experience join'd with common sense,
To mortals is a providence.

Passion, as frequently is seen,
Subsiding settles into Spleen.
Hence, as the plague of happy life,

I run away from party-strife.
A prince's cause, a church's claim,
I've known to raise a mighty flame,
And priest, as stoker, very free
To throw in peace and charity.

That tribe, whose practicals decree
Small beer the deadliest heresy;
Who, fond of pedigree, derive
From the most noted whore alive;
Who own wine's old prophetic aid,
And love the mitre Bacchus made,
Forbid the faithful to depend
On half-pint drinkers for a friend,
And in whose gay red-letter'd face
We read good-living more than grace:
Nor they so pure, and so precise,
Immac'late as their white of eyes,
Who for the spirit hug the Spleen,
Phylacter'd throughout all their mien,
Who their ill-tasted home-brew'd pray'r
To the state's mellow forms prefer;
Who doctrines, as infectious, fear,
Which are not steep'd in vinegar,
And samples of heart-chested grace
Expose in show-glass of the face,
Did never me as yet provoke
Either to honour band and cloak,
Or deck my hat with leaves of oak.

I rail not with mock-patriot grace At folks, because they are in place;

Nor, hir'd to praise with stallion pen,
Serve the ear-lechery of men;
But to avoid religious jars,
The laws are my expositors,

Which in my doubting mind create
Conformity to church and state.
I go, pursuant to my plan,
To Mecca with the caravan.
And think it right in common sense
Both for diversion and defence.

Reforming schemes are none of mine;
To mend the world 's a vast design:
Like theirs, who tug in little boat,
To pull to them the ship afloat,
While to defeat their labour'd end,

At once both wind and stream contend:
Success herein is seldom seen,
And zeal, when baffled, turns to Spleen.
Happy the man, who innocent,
Grieves not at ills he can't prevent;
His skiff does with the current glide,
Not puffing pull'd against the tide.
He, paddling by the scuffling crowd,
Sees unconcern'd life's wager row'd,
And when he can't prevent foul play,
Enjoys the folly of the fray.

By these reflections I repeal
Each hasty promise made in zeal.
When gospel propagators say,
We're bound our great light to display,
And Indian darkness drive away,
Yet none but drunken watchmen send,
And scoundrel link-boys for that end;
When they cry up this holy war,
Which every christian should be for,
Yet such as owe the law their ears,
We find employed as engineers:
This view my forward zeal so shocks,
In vain they hold the money-box.
At such a conduct, which intends
By vicious means such virtuous ends,
I laugh off spleen, and keep my pence
From spoiling Indian innocence.

Yet philosophic love of ease
I suffer not to prove disease,
But rise up in the virtuous cause
Of a free press, and equal laws.
The press restrain'd! nefandous thought!
In vain our sires have nobly fought:
While free from force the press remains,
Virtue and Freedom cheer our plains,
And Learning largesses bestows,
And keeps uncensur'd open house.
We to the nation's public mart
Our works of wit, and schemes of art,
And philosophic goods this way,
Like water-carriage, cheap convey.
This tree, which knowledge so affords,
Inquisitors with flaming swords
From lay approach with zeal defend,
Lest their own paradise should end.
The Press from her fecundous womb
Brought forth the arts of Greece and Rome;
Her offspring, skill'd in logic war,
Truth's banner wav'd in open air;
The monster Superstition fled,
And hid in shades its Gorgon head;
And lawless pow'r, the long-kept field,
By reason quell'd, was forc'd to yield.

This nurse of arts, and freedom's fence
To chain, is treason against sense;
And, Liberty, thy thousand tongues
None silence, who design no wrong>;
For those, who use the gag's restraint,
First rob, before they stop complaint.

Since disappointment gauls within,
And subjugates the soul to spleen,
Most schemes, as money-snares, I hate,
And bite not at projector's bait.
Sufficient wrecks appear each day,
And yet fresh fools are cast away.
Fre well the bubbled can turn round,
Their painted vessel runs aground;
Or in deep seas it oversets.
By a fierce hurricane of debts;
Or helin directors in one trip,
Freight first embezzled, sink the ship.
Such was of late a corporation3,
The brazen serpent of the nation,
Which, when hard accidents distress'd,
The poor must look at to be blest,
And thence expect, with paper seal'd
By fraud and us'ry, to be heal'd.

I in no soul-consumption wait
Whole years at levees of the great,
And hungry hopes regale the while
On the spare diet of a smile.
There you may see the idol stand
With mirror in his wanton hand;
Above, below, now here, now there,
He throws about the sunny glare.
Crowds pant, and press to seize the prize
The gay delusion of their eyes.

When Fancy tries her limuing skill
To draw and colour at her will,
And raise and round the figure well,
And show her talent to excel,

I guard my beart, lest it should woo
Unreal beauties Fancy drew,
And disappointed, feel despair
At loss of things, that never were.
When I lean politicians mark
Grazing on ether in the Park;
Who e'er on wing with open throats
Fly at debates, expresses, votes,
Just in the manner swallows use,
Catching their airy food of news;
Whose latrant stomachs oft molest
The deep-laid plans their dreams suggest;
Or see some poet pensive sit,
Fondly mistaking Spleen for Wit:
Who, though short-winded, still will aim
To sound the epic trump of Fame;
Who still on Phoebus' smiles will doat,
Nor learn conviction from his coat;

5 The Charitable Corporation, instituted for the relief of the industrious poor, by assisting them with small suns upon pledges at legal interest. By the villany of those who had the management of this scheme, the proprietors were defrauded of very considerable sums of money. In 1732 the conduct of the directors of this body became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, and some of them, who were members of the house of commons, were expelled for their concern in this iniquitous transaction.

And pleasure fled to, to redress
The sad fatigue of idleness.

Contentment, parent of delight,
So much a stranger to our sight,
Say, goddess, in what happy place
Mortals behold thy blooming face;
Thy gracious auspices impart,

And for thy temple choose my heart.
They, whom thou deignest to inspire,
Thy science learn, to bound desire;
By happy alchymy of mind

They turn to pleasure all they find;
They both disdain in outward mien
The grave and solemn garb of Spleen,
And meretricious arts of dress,
To feign a joy, and hide distress;
Unmov'd when the rude tempest blows,
Without an opiate they repose;
And cover'd by your shield, defy

The whizzing shafts, that round them fly:
Nor meddling with the god's affairs,
Concern themselves with distant cares;
But place their bliss in mental rest,
And feast upon the good possess'd.

Forc'd by soft violence of pray'r,
The blithsome goddess soothes my care,
I feel the deity inspire,

And thus she models my desire.
Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid,
Annuity securely made,

A farm some twenty miles from town,
Small, tight, salubrious, and my own;
Two maids, that never saw the town,
A serving-man, not quite a clown,
A boy to help to tread the mow,

And drive, while t' other holds the plough;
A chief, of temper form'd to please,
Fit to converse, and keep the keys;
And better to preserve the peace,
Commission'd by the name of niece
With understandings of a size
To think their master very wise.
May Heav'n (it's all I wish for) send
One genial room to treat a friend,
Where decent cup-board, little plate,
Display benevolence, not state.
And may my bumble dwelling stand
Upon some chosen spot of land:
A pond before full to the brim,

Where cows may cool, and geese may swim;
Behind, a green like velvet neat,
Soft to the eye, and to the feet;
Where od'rous plants in evening fair
Breathe all around ambrosial air;
From Eurus, foe to kitchen ground,
Fene'd by a slope with bushes crown'd,
Fit dwelling for the feather'd throng,
Who pay their quit-rents with a song;
With op'ning views of hill and dale,
Which sense and fancy too regale,
Where the half-cirque, which vision bounds,
Like amphitheatre surrounds;
And woods impervious to the breeze,
Thick phalanx of embodied trees,
From bills through plains in dusk array
Extended far, repel the day.

Here stillness, height, and solemn shade
Invite, and contemplation aid:
Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate
The dark decrees and will of Fate,

And dreams beneath the spreading beech
Inspire, and docile fancy teach,
While soft as breezy breath of wind,
Impulses rustle through the mind,
Here Dryads, scorning Phoebus' ray,
While Pan melodious pipes away,
In measur'd motions frisk about,
'Till old Silenus puts them out.
There see the clover, pea, and bean,
Vie in variety of green;

Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep,
Brown fields their fallow sabbaths keep,
Plump Ceres golden tresses wear,
And poppy top-knots deck her hair,
And silver streams through meadows stray,
And Naiads on the margin play,
And lesser nymphs on side of hills
From play-thing urns pour down the rills.
Thus shelter'd, free from care and strife,
May I enjoy a calm through life;

See faction, safe in low degree,
As men at land see storms at sea,
And laugh at miserable elves
Not kind, so much as to themselves,
Curs'd with such souls of base alloy,
As can possess, but not enjoy;
Debarr'd the pleasure to impart
By av'rice, sphincter of the heart,
Who wealth, hard earn'd by guilty cares,
Bequeath untouch'd to thankless heirs.
May 1, with look ungloom'd by guile,
And wearing Virtue's liv'ry-smile,
Prone the distressed to relieve,
And little trespasses forgive,
With income not in Fortune's pow'r,
And skill to make a busy hour,
With trips to town life to amuse,
To purchase books, and hear the news,
To see old friends, brush off the clown,
And quicken taste at coming down,
Unhurt by sickness' blasting rage,
And slowly mellowing in age,
When Fate extends its gathering gripe,
Fall off like fruit grown fully ripe,
Quit a worn being without pain,
Perhaps to blossom soon again.

But now more serious see me grow,
And what I think, my Memmius, know.
Th' enthusiast's hope, and raptures wild,
Have never yet my reason foil'd.

His springy soul dilates like air,

When free from weight of ambient care,

And, hush'd in meditation deep,
Slides into dreams, as when asleep;
Then, fond of new discoveries grown,
Proves a Columbus of her own,
Disdains the narrow bounds of place,
And through the wilds of endless space
Borne up on metaphysic wings,
Chases light forms and shadowy things,
And in the vague excursion caught,
Brings home some rare exotic thought.
The melancholy man such dreams,
As brightest evidence, esteems;
Fain would he see some distant scene
Suggested by his restless Spleen,
And Fancy's telescope applies
With tinctur'd glass to cheat his eyes.
Such thoughts, as love the gloom of night,

I close examine by the light;